My in-box last night contained notes from friends alerting me to a matter Glenn Beck is presently underscoring in his media world. I’m delighted this is all getting revisited. Below I decided to paste a redacted chapter section from my forthcoming book The Fall Away Factor. In chapter three I listed not standing with Israel as a significant factor in the Great Apostasy foretold in 1 Timothy 4:1 and elsewhere. Most of the chapter is a denouncement of Replacement Theology. The part I’m pasting below is the latter third of the chapter where I introduce the reader to what I dub Recognition Theology, which is what Glenn Beck is basically putting forth. Another recent book on the topic is Timothy Ballard’s book: The Covenant: America’s Sacred and Immutable Connection to Ancient Israel. You can also read a related post from me on this topic here and here. The best source are the four books by my friend Steven M. Collins which I cite in the footnotes below. His books are available here.

In my view, Israel issue is the greatest oversight in the history of Christianity. Hosea 1 is a passage on a previous list I mentioned of one hundred fifty chapters in the Bible relating to the end of the age. Hosea 1:10 tells us the Israelites will be innumerable at the end of the age. “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted.”

We know God made promises to both Isaac and Ishmael regarding their descendants. We also know that today there are nearly 400 million Arab people in the various Arab tribes (Ishmaelites). Yet, it’s commonly stated that there are somewhere between 12-14 million Jews today (only .002% of the present population of the world). The math here is straight forward and stunning actually: 400 million Ishmaelites today and only 14 million descendants of Isaac. Did God keep his promise to Ishmael but not Isaac or could it be God did keep his promise and the descendants of Isaac are a far larger group today than those we presently recognize as Jews.

Considering a world population now exceeding six billion people, we are either still a millennium or longer away from the end of the age or God’s covenant promise did not come true. Or, more likely, God considers “Israelites” to be a far broader group than merely the Tribe of Judah. Either we are still many, many generations from the end of the age, or there are more blood descendants of Abraham than are presently recognized right now. In fact, that is what we read next in Hosea 1:10. “In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” For reasons known to God, the true identity of masses of people at the end of the age is presently veiled.

The next verse speaks of an end-time reunification of the people of Judah and the people of Israel. “The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited…” From the time of the divided kingdom, the designations Judah and Israel ceased to be synonyms either in Scripture or in historical records. These verses in Hosea suggest the identity of the House of Israel will be veiled and not recognized until that latter time when the tribes are reunited.

During the reigns of Jeroboam and Rehoboam, the twelve tribes (thirteen counting Joseph as Ephraim and Manasseh) divided into two kingdoms. Two/three tribes made up the southern kingdom of Judah, ten tribes made up the northern kingdom of Israel. Soon after that we find passages in the Bible that speak of the “Jews” going to war against “Israel.”[1] They were separate peoples from this point forward and this is a critical point in correctly understanding Biblical prophecy.

Recognition Theology[2] is a term I coined a few years ago to refer to the unveiling of the identity of millions of the blood descendants of Abraham who presently do not even know who they are. The reason I call this Recognition Theology is because in the providence of God, he has kept this veiled until its forecast recognition or unveiling at the end of the age.

…

Recognition Theology contends that numerous nations and peoples, including America, are absolutely identifiable and recognizable in Bible Prophecy[3], archeology, genographic migration studies and haplotype studies.[4] The promise to the descendants of Abraham was that they would grow into “a nation and company of nations.”[5] No doubt the nation Israel is that nation. However, as that verse clearly indicates, the descendants of Abraham were not limited to that nation. We know that Israel today is by and large made up of descendants of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, as those were the two tribes that returned from the exile. Interestingly there is a company of approximately one hundred “Christian” nations today, most of whom support Israel.

In 586 B.C., when the First Temple was destroyed and twelve tribes were exiled from the Holy Land, it is estimated that they numbered around ten million. During the time of Nehemiah and Ezra, only a remnant returned (43,000 families which may number approximately 250,000 people). The remnant was mainly, though not exclusively, from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Millions of blood descendants of Abraham, almost entirely from the other ten tribes, assimilated into the surrounding pagan nations. Over the last twenty-five hundred years these covenant people migrated and literally populated a number of the nations on earth today. At present, only God knows exactly who and where they are, but we are certain that his promise for those people is irrevocable.

Imagine that millions of the blood descendants of Abraham, those we now consider the lost ten tribes, assimilated into pagan nations and migrated far from home. They did not vanish or disappear from the face of the earth, nor did the unconditional and irrevocable (Abrahamic Covenant) promises of God for their future get forfeited or canceled. God knows their identity in him even though they have no recognition of it. Jesus and his disciples were sent to the lost sheep of Israel.[6] Their whereabouts were not unknown. They were lost in a spiritual sense. These tribes and people groups have since increased into many large nations—innumerable, exactly as prophesied —increasing even more by adopting many “foreigners” into their national (covenant) family. And precisely as the Bible predicted, the descendants of David still sit on the thrones of nations[7] and possess the gates of their enemies.[8]

God’s promises to the descendants of David came true. They did and still do sit on the thrones of nations and historically they have and still do control the main geo-political gates of the world; Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Singapore, and Hong Kong to name a few. In the fifteenth century, Mary Queen of Scots traced her royal lineage back to King David and this was made plainly evident in the Scottish Declaration of Independence, also called the Declaration of Arbroath, which expressly states:

Most Holy Father and Lord, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that… the Scots… journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long time in Spain… Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they live today…[9]

It is apparent that five centuries ago the Scots considered themselves blood descendants of Abraham and were aware of the specific migration routes that brought them to their new homeland.

Queen Victoria, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the abdicated King Edward the 8th, the Duke of Windsor, and notably, Winston Churchill recognized vast populations of Israelites (blood descendants of Abraham) as distinguished from those presently identified as Jews or Judahites. Of the various other notable examples, my favorite is President Harry S. Truman. That historic afternoon of May 14, 1948, State Department officials informed President Truman the new nation would be called Israel, which surprised him, as he noted that he thought they would name it Judea after the people, not Israel after the land.[10] Obviously he was aware that what we call Israel today is mainly populated by the tribe of Judah.

This is an enormous and fascinating study, potentially permanently changing how we read the Bible. However, to continue on this will detract from the point of this chapter. Many will fall away at the end of the age because of an animosity toward Israel, fed by a total lack of awareness as to how this nation and company of nations fit into God’s end-time plan.

[2] Recognition Theology has several related but not-identical sub-streams including Two-House Messianics, British Israelism, Israelite Identity and various others who have interest in the identity of the so-called ten lost tribes of Israel. Recognition Theology vigorously rejects Replacement Theology, Mormon Theology, anti-Semitic or racial supremacy and Aryan race movements and other aberrant racialized theology variations. Recognition Theology celebrates the God who grafts the foreigner into his family and keeps every promise to raise up children of Abraham to be innumerable, a nation and a company of nations, blessing them to be a blessing to all nations.

[3] If this interests you please read a superb article by my friend Steven M. Collins called The United States of America in Biblical Prophecy available here – http://stevenmcollins.com/html/usa_in_prophecy.html I also highly recommend his four books which deal exhaustively with this topic – Volume One: The Origins and Empires of Ancient Israel; Volume Two: Israel’s Lost Empires; Volume Three: Parthia – The Forgotten Ancient Superpower and It’s Role In Biblical History and Volume Four: Israel’s Tribes Today.

[9]The Scottish Declaration of Independence reprinted in The Declaration of Arbroath, The National Trust for Scotland, 1970.

[10] The May 14, 2007 issue a Newsweek included an exclusive book excerpt entitled; “A Case for Courage.” The excerpt was from a chapter called “I Am Cyrus” about Truman and the birth of Israel from leading presidential historian Michael Beschloss’s book, Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989.